Pakistani haven concerns U.S.

Pakistan

Pamela Constable, Washington Post

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, September 30, 2009

As American troops move deeper into southern Afghanistan to fight Taliban insurgents, U.S. officials are expressing new concerns about the role of fugitive Taliban leader Muhammad Omar and his council of lieutenants, who reportedly plan and launch cross-border strikes from safe havens around the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.

But U.S. officials acknowledge they know relatively little about the remote and arid Pakistani border region, have no capacity to strike there, and have few windows into the turbulent mix of Pashtun tribal and religious politics that have turned the area into a sanctuary for the Taliban leaders, who are known collectively as the Quetta Shura. Pakistani officials, in turn, have been accused of allowing the Taliban movement to regroup in the Quetta area, viewing it as a strategic asset rather than a domestic threat, while the army has been heavily focused on curbing violent Islamic extremists in the northwest border region hundreds of miles away.

As a result, analysts said, Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, has suddenly emerged as an urgent but elusive new target as Washington grapples with the Taliban's rapidly spreading arc of influence and terror across Afghanistan.

"In the past, we focused on al Qaeda because they were a threat to us. The Quetta Shura mattered less to us because we had no troops in the region," said Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan. "Now our troops are there on the other side of the border, and the Quetta Shura is high on Washington's list."

Although Omar and his associates now keep a low profile and move constantly among villages and mosques in the lawless Pashtun strip between Quetta and the border, Pakistani and foreign experts said Baluchistan has reemerged as a Taliban sanctuary, recruiting ground and command post.